Even before Police Commissioner Ray Kelly makes a final decision about whether to take the plunge and run for mayor, the fact that there is a campaign to draft him reflects a sea change in New York City politics. Despite Democrats holding nearly a 7-1 edge in registration over Republicans, most voters have emancipated themselves from party control.

No longer is the Democratic primary the only game in town. As Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg proved by winning the last five mayoral elections as Republicans, Kelly, or someone else running against the Dem nominee, has a real chance of victory.

There is no kind way to say it. Democrats lost their stranglehold on City Hall because most voters don’t trust them to manage Gotham. That’s the truth behind the enthusiasm for the NYPD boss and the goal of making the general election a real contest between competing visions for the city.

The Dem decline is striking. As Bloomberg won his second and third terms, the losers, Fernando Ferrer and Bill Thompson, each got slightly more than 500,000 votes on the Democratic line—even though there are 2.8 million registered members of the party.

The city long has had a once-in-a-generation Republican spoiler. From La Guardia to Lindsay to Giuliani, GOP reformers were ushered in to clean up a mess, with Dems usually reasserting control soon after.

Yet that pattern has been shattered in the last five elections and now appears to be history, as the Kelly bandwagon demonstrates. Rather than waiting for the mess this time, supporters are pushing him to run to prevent one from developing.

Although Giuliani and Bloomberg are socially more moderate or liberal than national GOP officials, both have pursued strong anti-crime policies, a pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-work agenda and fiscal integrity, though not true spending restraint.

The result is that the city has thrived in comparison to most other cities, and proud New Yorkers don’t want to return to the grim old days. As former Mayor Ed Koch said in urging Kelly to run, he fears the city could drift back to rising crime and blight if the policies are changed.

“I’m afraid all the good work done by Giuliani and Bloomberg will go down the drain,” Koch told The Post.

The clamor should be a wake-up call to those seeking the Democratic nomination. To outsiders, their action so far looks like nothing more than an audition for the union vote. Pandering doesn’t fully describe their willingness to kowtow and abdicate the responsibility to govern on behalf of taxpayers.

Even liberals who might support those candidates are being taken for granted, with the pols assuming that if they get the unions, individual voters will simply fall in line.

Some of that is standard-issue New York groupthink, but the tilt has grown worse with the creation of the Working Families Party. A pure union front, it is the tail wagging the dog, with the tiny party using its ballot line and union muscle to push Dem candidates even further left.

It is telling that Council Speaker Christine Quinn fashions herself as the moderate in the top tier, which seems to mean she gives unions only about 80 percent of what they want.

None of the top four — Quinn, Thompson, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — supported pension reforms won by Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo. None has put forth a serious effort to cut spending, instead relying on ever-growing taxes and fees to satisfy yet another promised expansion of government. They vow more subsidies for more people, without a thought about who will pay or the impact.

Their policies reveal them to be stuck in a time warp, as though the last 18 years of reduced crime and economic growth were aberrations that they will undo. They have it backwards. They are the aberrations.

This is the New New York, and they better get used to it. Anybody who hopes to lead it needs a plan to keep moving forward, not retreating to the beat of the union drummer into the gloom of the past.

All the president’s yes men

Oh, to be a fly on the wall as President Obama gathered his human props for yet another attempt to find a scapegoat for America’s problems. With the twin scandals of the General Services Administration and the Secret Service exploding all around him, Obama summoned Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder and others for an attack on phantom oil “speculators,” who, he insisted, are driving up prices at the pump.

Before they marched to the Rose Garden like tin soldiers, did his aides express reluctance about the “crackdown?” Were they embarrassed at being used in a naked political stunt?

Probably not. He doesn’t like dissent. Besides, there’s no time for scruples when a few voters can still be fooled into thinking the president has an energy policy, a tax policy and an economic plan.

Hope & Change has become Blame & Shame. It’s a daily occurrence now, and the chase for oil speculators is a classic example. In Obama’s world, there’s always somebody whose greed is the problem.

Predictably, he pitched his oil scheme in terms of fairness and victimization. “We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions while millions of American families get the short end of the stick,” he said.

Ho hum. He uses the same formulation for all his programs, from tax hikes to health care. The “system” is always broken and somebody is always getting away with something that you aren’t.

It’s simple — we’re all either oppressed or oppressors.

The politics of envy require a villain. When you can’t find one, you just create one out of whole cloth.

That’s what he does because that’s who he is.

Rich tax is ‘Liu’dicrous

John Liu is getting pathetic. The city comptroller, the focus of a federal probe into his campaign finances, is desperately seeking survival by belatedly backing the already-dead Buffett Rule.

His is a lifeboat full of holes. In a bizarre “analysis,” Liu argues that forcing city millionaires to pay at least 30 percent of their income could mean the feds could eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax for other city residents.

In amateur fashion, he ignores any local impact from New Yorkers sending hundreds of millions more to Washington. And there is zero talk anywhere of switching one tax for the other — which couldn’t be done just for New York.

Other than that, brilliant!

Nat’l Puppet Radio

NPR can’t help itself. It’s addicted to Obama puffery. After noting the latest on the General Services scandal, a news reader said the issue “is an embarrassment for the Obama administration, which has been promoting good governance.”